New fic - "Star Wars : "Per Exasperatio Ad Astra Ch. 13"
In which old haunts are revisited and found new
The Supreme Leader’s office was in one of the general administrative sections that had survived the attack. His private quarters, however, were attached to his throne room. According to Opan’s quick briefing, Supremacy’s shields, and the ambient heating of the still-operational sectors kept the temperature in that sector no lower than ten degrees celsius below zero, making true cold-weather gear unnecessary. The recording droids perched on Tiekte’s shoulder, and that of Colonel Garmuth of the FSB would also function unimpeded, as would AK-49’s remote, floating unobtrusively above eye-line near the ceiling of the lift.
Hux was nonetheless glad of his greatcoat and its wide, well-engineered temperature tolerances; both Tiekte and Garmuth were sensibly wearing theirs too. Hux noted absently that Tiekte’s coat came down to her ankles; since uniforms were individually fabricated to fit, this was presumably a quirk of the Civilian Arm, rather than a sizing error. Ren, of course, had not added anything to his outfit, and, of course, showed no signs of noticing the temperature.
As the FSB security droid on duty in the receiving platform identified them and floated aside to allow the main doors to the throne room to slide open, Hux added a note to his pad to assign a team to design an appropriate uniform for the Supreme Leader. Snoke had not shown himself to the masses, so the fact that he had ruled the First Order in slippers and a dressing-gown had not been a serious issue. However, Ren was absolutely not going to be seen in public dressed in rags. The Order’s credibility needed every boost it could get right now, and a Supreme Leader outfitted like a mendicant shaman would be extremely counterproductive, not necessarily for the Galaxy as a whole (Hux already had a whole layer of his mind mulling ways to take advantage of the whole…not bad-looking Force-user thing), but for High Command, which still needed to be brought on side, and had a conditioned response to uniforms.
“Really, Grand Marshal,” the Supreme Leader remarked out loud, condensation puffing out with every breath, “My clothes are the least of your concerns, right now.”
Hux bit back a snarl, and was rewarded when Tiekte leapt in, tangentially but usefully. “Quite right, sir, your public image is of utmost importance! With your permission, I will request the Quartermaster to assign a designer to begin work with our team immediately! Sample designs for your ceremonial uniform should be ready for your approval in good time for your first public appearance!”
She had obviously used her half hour’s grace to get the good anxiolytics, Hux noted with mild envy. Ren for his part seemed to find slightly manic enthusiasm harder to deal with than either terror or hostility.
“Ah, thank you, Director-General, my office will be in touch.” Hux made sure to record this on his pad, and smirked internally at the silent acknowledgement from AK-49 that the instruction had been sent out to all relevant stations.
Whatever reply Tiekte might have been about to make died with a gasp as the doors to the receiving platform hissed shut behind them, leaving them on the long walkway leading to the throne. The throne-room’s current temperature did have one huge, obvious advantage. Ren had given no instructions, and FSB had been unable to override Hux’s instructions to lock it down immediately. The evidence of messy murder had therefore not been interfered with in anyway, apart from the thin layer of freeze-dried fire-suppressant foam drizzled frostily over floor, throne, equipment, random mess, and dead bodies. The deployment of the foam had been delayed by the deranging effect on systems of having the ship break in two, and had thus been unable to affect that unfortunate scene with Ren, but it had at least put out the fires.
The vulgar red curtains had largely collapsed and no longer concealed the starscape against which the fragments of Supremacy drifted. Emergency lights burned along the base of the walls, but everything above floor-level was lit only by starlight. Supremacy was in orbit out on the far edge of the system, and the brilliant pin-point of Crait’s star was occulted by the ship’s bulk. The lower level where the Praetorians had their muster-station was in darkness. Hux had disliked the room (as he disliked everything that he feared), with its vainglorious throne and its combination of wasteful space and claustrophobic closeness, as if he was perpetually in the mouth of some hideous predator (which he had been). He strongly hoped that Ren did not intend to take it over, or at least would re-decorate first.
“It’s actually quite nice without the curtains,” Ren said. “I like the view.”
Snoke’s bisected body lay where it had fallen, its pale, blue eyes now a blind, opaque grey. The pieces of the ridiculous gold dressing-gown lay limply around it, like the discarded skin of some exotically unpleasant creature (which it basically was, of course). The harsh contrasts of black shadow and silver starlight made the red-armoured bodies of the Praetorians, in various stages of dismemberment, almost indistinguishable from the heaps of charred red curtains. All in all, the room strongly resembled the final scene of some particularly horrid Old Republic musical drama (the partisans fleeing the Empire’s fall had, quite understandably, not prioritised entertainment material, and the opera collection of the late, unlamented Gallius Rax had been a large proportion of what they had; the effect of this on the First Order’s approach to life was unnoticed at the time, but would provide ample fuel for academic speculation in later eras).
Colonel Garmuth approached the nearest dismembered body cautiously. It had very obviously been hacked to death with a lightsaber. He hesitated, then backed slowly away from the others, hand carefully nowhere near his blaster.
“Sir…”
Hux wondered how Ren was going to spin this. There had been a brief admission of responsibility over lunch, but no details.
“I will be giving a full account to the SOM,” Ren said, and Garmuth relaxed minutely at this indication that proprieties were at least potentially being observed. “But in summary, Supreme Leader Snoke and I were interviewing a potential candidate for the Knights of Ren. In the course of the discussion, we…disagreed upon how to approach the recruitment, since it had relevance to the future orientation of the Order in relation to the Force. The former Leader and I then resolved the dispute according to the praxis of the Department of Force Affairs, just before the Resistance attack on the ship. My...perspective prevailed, and I am accordingly now Supreme Leader.”
And that was as clear as a sandstorm on Jakku, Hux thought crossly. Though points to Ren for managing to refer to an office that he hadn’t even known existed three hours ago. Garmuth looked utterly bewildered, as well he might, given that while Ren’s every word had been good Basic, put together they made no sense whatsoever to a normal person not already steeped in obsolete mysticism. But he demonstrated why he deserved his rank, and asked, in a perfectly steady voice, “What happened to the candidate, sir? I don’t see another body…”
Ren moved his shoulders in a minimal shrug. “The Praetorians did their duty; they died honourably. In the circumstances, the candidate decided against joining the Knights, and departed in the late Leader’s shuttle while I was knocked unconscious during the Resistance attack.”
Tiekte had stepped forward to inspect another body, this one intact except for the fatal lightsaber hole through its face-plate; no doubt coincidentally, her position left Garmin in a potential cross-fire. Hux hoped that she was at least wearing armour; under the greatcoat, his own armorweave-lined uniform tunic was a comforting weight around his body. She glanced up at the three tense figures, and said evenly, “Ansiv, if things weren’t on the square, you’d be dead already.”
“Quite so, Acting Director-General,” Hux said. He glanced at his datapad. AK-49 already had control of Garmin’s droid (though not, irritatingly, Tiekte’s; it was hurriedly deploying jammers), so no transmissions were getting out. Time was wasting while FSB dithered about its loyalties. Hux was perfectly prepared to shoot the man and be done. It wasn’t as if things could get any more irregular than they already were.
“Supreme Leader, your instructions?”
Ren was walking past Garmuth as if the stand-off had already been resolved, and perhaps for someone who could stop blaster bolts with his mind it had been. The FSB chief looked stressed. Hux did not blame him, and would give his corpse honourable disposal.
Tiekte caught Hux’s eye, wiggled her eyebrows vigorously (they were thick and black, so the movement was obvious, even in the low light) and tapped her datapad.
Ah. Yes, perhaps that would make it unnecessary to find a new FSB Chief just yet.
“Supreme Leader, permission to share the relevant regulations with Colonel Garmuth?”
“Mmm,” was the only reply. Ren was on one knee by Snoke’s remains, doing something with the corpse’s hand. He stood up, sliding something into his tunic pocket; Hux squinted but it was too dark to see what it was.
WHAT IS THAT he thought as hard as he could, while quickly authorising Garmuth to read Limited Circular SLO732-15AGAD ‘Annex Auresh: Extraordinary Governing Regulations of the Department of Force Affairs’.
Ouch. the reply came back. Not so loud, please. You’ll see later.
A notification came up, informing Hux that the regulations in question had been suspended until further notice, authority of the Supreme Leader. Hux checked the timestamp; a little over half an hour ago.
Ren was now ambling towards the oculus beside the throne. Tiekte looked between him and Garmuth, presumably decided that Hux could murder Garmuth on his own if he had to, and followed. Her recording droid rose from her shoulder and floated behind her. Guarding her back. AK-49 had managed to identify its specs, at least. It was a non-Order-standard model and armed. AK-49 drew the Grand Marshal-designate’s attention to the fact that the Civilian Arm obviously had its own independent access to security materiel.
“Sir,” Garmuth said. He was looking at his own datapad, where Limited Circular SLO732-15AGAD had obviously appeared. He met Hux’s gaze. “Is this…really on the square?”
Hux stayed where he was. “As square as it ever was, Colonel.” Garmuth had been very young when the Empire fell; a newly commissioned officer. He had gone through the hard years of hunger and struggle and flight; and he was old enough to remember at least something of the First Order when it had been Sloane’s, not Snoke’s.
“But if it helps, the Civilian Arm is on board.”
Garmuth looked into the shadows. Ren had one hand on the oculus’ casing, probably doing something Force-related and incomprehensible. Tiekte was nodding and making notes on her datapad. Garmuth’s mouth thinned into a small, tight smile.
“Grand Admiral Sloane,” he said. It was not a question.
“Most probably.”
Garmuth nodded, decision apparently made. “Well then.” He straightened to attention. “What are the Supreme Leader’s orders here, sir?”
“Hux!” Ren was waving them forward.
Hux picked his way obediently through the carnage and the mounds of charred fabric, Garmuth following in his wake (not too close; FSB knew about the monomolecular knife). He paused at one of the power modulators that had something to do with the oculus and added another note to his ever-lengthening list of upgrades for Chief Ta-No-Ta to incorporate into the eventual new and improved Supremacy. Snoke, in a fit of unusually minor sadism, had once graciously given him a tour, and then refused to actually share any details, not even a basic energy-flow diagram. Judging from the fragments of red armour and uniform fabric around its edge, a Praetorian had been pushed into it, and even so minor an insult had been enough to damage it. Hux sniffed in disdain at the obviously poor resilience of the design. The throne room’s fixtures and fittings were as specified by Snoke and Snoke alone; Hux’s input and recommendations (which had included proper shielding on all live installations, and a proper autonomous defence system rather than the dramatic but obviously useless guards) had all been ignored.
All things considered, it served Snoke right.
Four humans and three droids gathered at the foot of the throne, away from Snoke’s (to Hux at least, agreeably cauterised and frozen solid) remains.
“We need to examine Snoke’s quarters now,” the Supreme Leader said. There was a brief silence.
“Um,” Tiekte said. “Sir. Where are they?”
. . . . .
The Stellar Envoy, as it now was, dropped out of hyperspace with a thump of overstrained motivators. Dozing porgs and Resistance members woke up.
“Not bad.”
“Where are we?” Rey had had enough sleep (and did not actually want to see Kylo Ren in her dreams again; not at the moment, anyway), and Chewbacca had graciously allowed her the pilot’s chair. The numbers he had input for their destination had given her “Bespin System”, without more, and the Millenn….Stellar Envoy’s databases had coded access; more than logical, based on the things Chewbacca had been telling her about his and Han Solo’s activities in the galactic wilds.
“Outer edge of the Bespin System,” Chewbacca said. “Enough time to send out our hail and see what comes back before we actually get there.”
The hail went out; Rey was not allowed to see what Chewbacca sent, but he did explain that it was a personal code. Half an hour and another cup of tea later, the response came back. Chewbacca grunted satisfaction, had a short colloquy with General Organa, and the Millenn…Stellar Envoy activated its public transponder and cruised gently into the system under sublight propulsion. Its destination was currently on the other side of the system, beyond the star, so it was some six hours later that the huge, pink-gold globe of Bespin VII filled the cockpit viewport, and Port Control sent them the codes to join the inbound traffic queue.
To Rey’s surprise, Port Control directed them, not to the docks of Cloud City, the giant orbital station to which every ship in the system was apparently headed, but beyond, to a much smaller installation similarly floating in Bespin VII’s life zone, but almost a quarter of the way further along the planet’s equator.
“Welcome, honoured visitors, to Nimbus City, home of the Galaxy’s premier confidential conference and mediation service!”, a mellifluous voice of indeterminate species announced over the comm. From the tilt of Chewbacca’s head, Rey guessed that the speaker was also communicating in frequencies above or below the human aural range. “It is our joy to receive you during our special pre-opening period, reserved exclusively for the most distinguished of galactic dignitaries and the oldest friends of Cloud City and the Calrissian Corporation! Our uniquely luxurious facilities can be customised for the comfort and pleasure of 99% of the Galaxy’s known carbon, silicon, methane, ammonia, boron or arsenic-based sapient species, and we are confident in our ability to welcome the most exacting of delegations at the highest galactic level of service, security and absolute discretion!”
Unlike Cloud City, Nimbus City was shaped like a thick, horizontally oriented biconvex lens, clearly intended to be mobile. Gardens, lakes and artificial hills occupied its upper surface, open to the magnificent view of clouds and Bespin VII, but protected from the weather (among other things) by a shield system that was, Rey learned later, military grade, and cutting-edge military at that. The Millenn….Stellar Envoy was guided into a shielded traffic lane, generated by self-propelled units that deployed from the rim of the disc as it approached. An armoured docking bay enfolded it, as the generator units followed it in and redeployed protectively around the entrance.
A tall, older human male was waiting for them, elaborately dressed and surrounded by smartly uniformed, heavily armed guards of assorted species. Rey examined him with interest. He wasn’t Force-strong in the way of the General (and Kylo Ren and, ugh, Snoke) but it moved around him with a quicksilver flicker that she had seen recently in both Han Solo and Poe Dameron. She wondered if this person was a pilot too.
Phenotype-wise he was clearly of the same curly-haired sub-type as Finn, not as rare as her own (she had learned from the random information sifted from scavenged datapads that her light-coloured, variable-eye-and-hair-colourtype was found in large numbers on fewer than nine thousand planets, mostly in the Core; the majority of mainline humans were like Rose or Kylo Ren, with variable skin colour but dark eyes and straightish, dark hair), but still not particularly common outside the Core.
The General strode down the ramp, carrying her stick like a weapon, Chewbacca at her side; the man stepped forward and did his best to hug them both at the same time. The Force swirled around them in a complex mixture of emotions; Rey shielded herself without thinking (a very new skill, only a few hours old) against the triple barrage of grief, relief, affection, worry and pain. They were all obviously very old friends, and Rey let herself relax just a little. Perhaps they were safe here, at least for a while.
. . . . .
Snoke’s quarters were under his throne room, one level below the guardrooms, and accessible via his throne, which doubled as a lift, to which power had been cut off. After a moment, Colonel Garmuth diffidently offered the information that the system had its own self-contained power source.
“But it’s coded access, sir, and we never knew how Sno…former Supreme Leader Snoke actually activated it.”
Ren stared up at the throne as if it were strapped into an interrogation chair. After a moment, he said, “All of you stay where you are,” and jumped up onto the shadowy throne platform in one dramatic leap. Beside him, Hux definitely heard a happy sigh from Tiekte, and a muttered instruction to her droid to “Get every second of this!”
Prowling the throne platform, his tall, dark figure starlit and shadowed by turns, the Supreme Leader was a sight both eerie and compelling. Hux wished for a decent night-visor, so that he could see what exactly the wretched man was up to; instinct told him that pinning the Supreme Leader with a beam from the hand-lamp in his pocket would not be well-received. After a couple of traverses, Ren stilled in front of the throne, arms loose and relaxed at his sides. There was an abrupt, low-pitched hum, and the lights around the throne came on. Ren turned and looked down at them.
“Come up,” he said, and lifted a hand. Hux gritted his teeth over silence automatically as the familiar sensation of the Force in use surrounded him (it was rather like the first fitting of his armoured uniform tunic, as if molecules of air had suddenly all tightened around him into another layer of skin); Garmuth gasped, and Tiekte squeaked in startlement, as all three of them were suddenly swept off their feet and deposited on the throne platform next to Ren.
Ren turned back, sat down on the throne, and laid his left hand on the controls on its arm. Hux stared at the black ring for a moment before realising that it was…had been …Snoke’s. The droids swooped in, just in time for the glacis around the throne to open up like the mouth of a sarlacc, and swallow them, throne and all.
The Supreme Leader’s office was in one of the general administrative sections that had survived the attack. His private quarters, however, were attached to his throne room. According to Opan’s quick briefing, Supremacy’s shields, and the ambient heating of the still-operational sectors kept the temperature in that sector no lower than ten degrees celsius below zero, making true cold-weather gear unnecessary. The recording droids perched on Tiekte’s shoulder, and that of Colonel Garmuth of the FSB would also function unimpeded, as would AK-49’s remote, floating unobtrusively above eye-line near the ceiling of the lift.
Hux was nonetheless glad of his greatcoat and its wide, well-engineered temperature tolerances; both Tiekte and Garmuth were sensibly wearing theirs too. Hux noted absently that Tiekte’s coat came down to her ankles; since uniforms were individually fabricated to fit, this was presumably a quirk of the Civilian Arm, rather than a sizing error. Ren, of course, had not added anything to his outfit, and, of course, showed no signs of noticing the temperature.
As the FSB security droid on duty in the receiving platform identified them and floated aside to allow the main doors to the throne room to slide open, Hux added a note to his pad to assign a team to design an appropriate uniform for the Supreme Leader. Snoke had not shown himself to the masses, so the fact that he had ruled the First Order in slippers and a dressing-gown had not been a serious issue. However, Ren was absolutely not going to be seen in public dressed in rags. The Order’s credibility needed every boost it could get right now, and a Supreme Leader outfitted like a mendicant shaman would be extremely counterproductive, not necessarily for the Galaxy as a whole (Hux already had a whole layer of his mind mulling ways to take advantage of the whole…not bad-looking Force-user thing), but for High Command, which still needed to be brought on side, and had a conditioned response to uniforms.
“Really, Grand Marshal,” the Supreme Leader remarked out loud, condensation puffing out with every breath, “My clothes are the least of your concerns, right now.”
Hux bit back a snarl, and was rewarded when Tiekte leapt in, tangentially but usefully. “Quite right, sir, your public image is of utmost importance! With your permission, I will request the Quartermaster to assign a designer to begin work with our team immediately! Sample designs for your ceremonial uniform should be ready for your approval in good time for your first public appearance!”
She had obviously used her half hour’s grace to get the good anxiolytics, Hux noted with mild envy. Ren for his part seemed to find slightly manic enthusiasm harder to deal with than either terror or hostility.
“Ah, thank you, Director-General, my office will be in touch.” Hux made sure to record this on his pad, and smirked internally at the silent acknowledgement from AK-49 that the instruction had been sent out to all relevant stations.
Whatever reply Tiekte might have been about to make died with a gasp as the doors to the receiving platform hissed shut behind them, leaving them on the long walkway leading to the throne. The throne-room’s current temperature did have one huge, obvious advantage. Ren had given no instructions, and FSB had been unable to override Hux’s instructions to lock it down immediately. The evidence of messy murder had therefore not been interfered with in anyway, apart from the thin layer of freeze-dried fire-suppressant foam drizzled frostily over floor, throne, equipment, random mess, and dead bodies. The deployment of the foam had been delayed by the deranging effect on systems of having the ship break in two, and had thus been unable to affect that unfortunate scene with Ren, but it had at least put out the fires.
The vulgar red curtains had largely collapsed and no longer concealed the starscape against which the fragments of Supremacy drifted. Emergency lights burned along the base of the walls, but everything above floor-level was lit only by starlight. Supremacy was in orbit out on the far edge of the system, and the brilliant pin-point of Crait’s star was occulted by the ship’s bulk. The lower level where the Praetorians had their muster-station was in darkness. Hux had disliked the room (as he disliked everything that he feared), with its vainglorious throne and its combination of wasteful space and claustrophobic closeness, as if he was perpetually in the mouth of some hideous predator (which he had been). He strongly hoped that Ren did not intend to take it over, or at least would re-decorate first.
“It’s actually quite nice without the curtains,” Ren said. “I like the view.”
Snoke’s bisected body lay where it had fallen, its pale, blue eyes now a blind, opaque grey. The pieces of the ridiculous gold dressing-gown lay limply around it, like the discarded skin of some exotically unpleasant creature (which it basically was, of course). The harsh contrasts of black shadow and silver starlight made the red-armoured bodies of the Praetorians, in various stages of dismemberment, almost indistinguishable from the heaps of charred red curtains. All in all, the room strongly resembled the final scene of some particularly horrid Old Republic musical drama (the partisans fleeing the Empire’s fall had, quite understandably, not prioritised entertainment material, and the opera collection of the late, unlamented Gallius Rax had been a large proportion of what they had; the effect of this on the First Order’s approach to life was unnoticed at the time, but would provide ample fuel for academic speculation in later eras).
Colonel Garmuth approached the nearest dismembered body cautiously. It had very obviously been hacked to death with a lightsaber. He hesitated, then backed slowly away from the others, hand carefully nowhere near his blaster.
“Sir…”
Hux wondered how Ren was going to spin this. There had been a brief admission of responsibility over lunch, but no details.
“I will be giving a full account to the SOM,” Ren said, and Garmuth relaxed minutely at this indication that proprieties were at least potentially being observed. “But in summary, Supreme Leader Snoke and I were interviewing a potential candidate for the Knights of Ren. In the course of the discussion, we…disagreed upon how to approach the recruitment, since it had relevance to the future orientation of the Order in relation to the Force. The former Leader and I then resolved the dispute according to the praxis of the Department of Force Affairs, just before the Resistance attack on the ship. My...perspective prevailed, and I am accordingly now Supreme Leader.”
And that was as clear as a sandstorm on Jakku, Hux thought crossly. Though points to Ren for managing to refer to an office that he hadn’t even known existed three hours ago. Garmuth looked utterly bewildered, as well he might, given that while Ren’s every word had been good Basic, put together they made no sense whatsoever to a normal person not already steeped in obsolete mysticism. But he demonstrated why he deserved his rank, and asked, in a perfectly steady voice, “What happened to the candidate, sir? I don’t see another body…”
Ren moved his shoulders in a minimal shrug. “The Praetorians did their duty; they died honourably. In the circumstances, the candidate decided against joining the Knights, and departed in the late Leader’s shuttle while I was knocked unconscious during the Resistance attack.”
Tiekte had stepped forward to inspect another body, this one intact except for the fatal lightsaber hole through its face-plate; no doubt coincidentally, her position left Garmin in a potential cross-fire. Hux hoped that she was at least wearing armour; under the greatcoat, his own armorweave-lined uniform tunic was a comforting weight around his body. She glanced up at the three tense figures, and said evenly, “Ansiv, if things weren’t on the square, you’d be dead already.”
“Quite so, Acting Director-General,” Hux said. He glanced at his datapad. AK-49 already had control of Garmin’s droid (though not, irritatingly, Tiekte’s; it was hurriedly deploying jammers), so no transmissions were getting out. Time was wasting while FSB dithered about its loyalties. Hux was perfectly prepared to shoot the man and be done. It wasn’t as if things could get any more irregular than they already were.
“Supreme Leader, your instructions?”
Ren was walking past Garmuth as if the stand-off had already been resolved, and perhaps for someone who could stop blaster bolts with his mind it had been. The FSB chief looked stressed. Hux did not blame him, and would give his corpse honourable disposal.
Tiekte caught Hux’s eye, wiggled her eyebrows vigorously (they were thick and black, so the movement was obvious, even in the low light) and tapped her datapad.
Ah. Yes, perhaps that would make it unnecessary to find a new FSB Chief just yet.
“Supreme Leader, permission to share the relevant regulations with Colonel Garmuth?”
“Mmm,” was the only reply. Ren was on one knee by Snoke’s remains, doing something with the corpse’s hand. He stood up, sliding something into his tunic pocket; Hux squinted but it was too dark to see what it was.
WHAT IS THAT he thought as hard as he could, while quickly authorising Garmuth to read Limited Circular SLO732-15AGAD ‘Annex Auresh: Extraordinary Governing Regulations of the Department of Force Affairs’.
Ouch. the reply came back. Not so loud, please. You’ll see later.
A notification came up, informing Hux that the regulations in question had been suspended until further notice, authority of the Supreme Leader. Hux checked the timestamp; a little over half an hour ago.
Ren was now ambling towards the oculus beside the throne. Tiekte looked between him and Garmuth, presumably decided that Hux could murder Garmuth on his own if he had to, and followed. Her recording droid rose from her shoulder and floated behind her. Guarding her back. AK-49 had managed to identify its specs, at least. It was a non-Order-standard model and armed. AK-49 drew the Grand Marshal-designate’s attention to the fact that the Civilian Arm obviously had its own independent access to security materiel.
“Sir,” Garmuth said. He was looking at his own datapad, where Limited Circular SLO732-15AGAD had obviously appeared. He met Hux’s gaze. “Is this…really on the square?”
Hux stayed where he was. “As square as it ever was, Colonel.” Garmuth had been very young when the Empire fell; a newly commissioned officer. He had gone through the hard years of hunger and struggle and flight; and he was old enough to remember at least something of the First Order when it had been Sloane’s, not Snoke’s.
“But if it helps, the Civilian Arm is on board.”
Garmuth looked into the shadows. Ren had one hand on the oculus’ casing, probably doing something Force-related and incomprehensible. Tiekte was nodding and making notes on her datapad. Garmuth’s mouth thinned into a small, tight smile.
“Grand Admiral Sloane,” he said. It was not a question.
“Most probably.”
Garmuth nodded, decision apparently made. “Well then.” He straightened to attention. “What are the Supreme Leader’s orders here, sir?”
“Hux!” Ren was waving them forward.
Hux picked his way obediently through the carnage and the mounds of charred fabric, Garmuth following in his wake (not too close; FSB knew about the monomolecular knife). He paused at one of the power modulators that had something to do with the oculus and added another note to his ever-lengthening list of upgrades for Chief Ta-No-Ta to incorporate into the eventual new and improved Supremacy. Snoke, in a fit of unusually minor sadism, had once graciously given him a tour, and then refused to actually share any details, not even a basic energy-flow diagram. Judging from the fragments of red armour and uniform fabric around its edge, a Praetorian had been pushed into it, and even so minor an insult had been enough to damage it. Hux sniffed in disdain at the obviously poor resilience of the design. The throne room’s fixtures and fittings were as specified by Snoke and Snoke alone; Hux’s input and recommendations (which had included proper shielding on all live installations, and a proper autonomous defence system rather than the dramatic but obviously useless guards) had all been ignored.
All things considered, it served Snoke right.
Four humans and three droids gathered at the foot of the throne, away from Snoke’s (to Hux at least, agreeably cauterised and frozen solid) remains.
“We need to examine Snoke’s quarters now,” the Supreme Leader said. There was a brief silence.
“Um,” Tiekte said. “Sir. Where are they?”
. . . . .
The Stellar Envoy, as it now was, dropped out of hyperspace with a thump of overstrained motivators. Dozing porgs and Resistance members woke up.
“Not bad.”
“Where are we?” Rey had had enough sleep (and did not actually want to see Kylo Ren in her dreams again; not at the moment, anyway), and Chewbacca had graciously allowed her the pilot’s chair. The numbers he had input for their destination had given her “Bespin System”, without more, and the Millenn….Stellar Envoy’s databases had coded access; more than logical, based on the things Chewbacca had been telling her about his and Han Solo’s activities in the galactic wilds.
“Outer edge of the Bespin System,” Chewbacca said. “Enough time to send out our hail and see what comes back before we actually get there.”
The hail went out; Rey was not allowed to see what Chewbacca sent, but he did explain that it was a personal code. Half an hour and another cup of tea later, the response came back. Chewbacca grunted satisfaction, had a short colloquy with General Organa, and the Millenn…Stellar Envoy activated its public transponder and cruised gently into the system under sublight propulsion. Its destination was currently on the other side of the system, beyond the star, so it was some six hours later that the huge, pink-gold globe of Bespin VII filled the cockpit viewport, and Port Control sent them the codes to join the inbound traffic queue.
To Rey’s surprise, Port Control directed them, not to the docks of Cloud City, the giant orbital station to which every ship in the system was apparently headed, but beyond, to a much smaller installation similarly floating in Bespin VII’s life zone, but almost a quarter of the way further along the planet’s equator.
“Welcome, honoured visitors, to Nimbus City, home of the Galaxy’s premier confidential conference and mediation service!”, a mellifluous voice of indeterminate species announced over the comm. From the tilt of Chewbacca’s head, Rey guessed that the speaker was also communicating in frequencies above or below the human aural range. “It is our joy to receive you during our special pre-opening period, reserved exclusively for the most distinguished of galactic dignitaries and the oldest friends of Cloud City and the Calrissian Corporation! Our uniquely luxurious facilities can be customised for the comfort and pleasure of 99% of the Galaxy’s known carbon, silicon, methane, ammonia, boron or arsenic-based sapient species, and we are confident in our ability to welcome the most exacting of delegations at the highest galactic level of service, security and absolute discretion!”
Unlike Cloud City, Nimbus City was shaped like a thick, horizontally oriented biconvex lens, clearly intended to be mobile. Gardens, lakes and artificial hills occupied its upper surface, open to the magnificent view of clouds and Bespin VII, but protected from the weather (among other things) by a shield system that was, Rey learned later, military grade, and cutting-edge military at that. The Millenn….Stellar Envoy was guided into a shielded traffic lane, generated by self-propelled units that deployed from the rim of the disc as it approached. An armoured docking bay enfolded it, as the generator units followed it in and redeployed protectively around the entrance.
A tall, older human male was waiting for them, elaborately dressed and surrounded by smartly uniformed, heavily armed guards of assorted species. Rey examined him with interest. He wasn’t Force-strong in the way of the General (and Kylo Ren and, ugh, Snoke) but it moved around him with a quicksilver flicker that she had seen recently in both Han Solo and Poe Dameron. She wondered if this person was a pilot too.
Phenotype-wise he was clearly of the same curly-haired sub-type as Finn, not as rare as her own (she had learned from the random information sifted from scavenged datapads that her light-coloured, variable-eye-and-hair-colourtype was found in large numbers on fewer than nine thousand planets, mostly in the Core; the majority of mainline humans were like Rose or Kylo Ren, with variable skin colour but dark eyes and straightish, dark hair), but still not particularly common outside the Core.
The General strode down the ramp, carrying her stick like a weapon, Chewbacca at her side; the man stepped forward and did his best to hug them both at the same time. The Force swirled around them in a complex mixture of emotions; Rey shielded herself without thinking (a very new skill, only a few hours old) against the triple barrage of grief, relief, affection, worry and pain. They were all obviously very old friends, and Rey let herself relax just a little. Perhaps they were safe here, at least for a while.
. . . . .
Snoke’s quarters were under his throne room, one level below the guardrooms, and accessible via his throne, which doubled as a lift, to which power had been cut off. After a moment, Colonel Garmuth diffidently offered the information that the system had its own self-contained power source.
“But it’s coded access, sir, and we never knew how Sno…former Supreme Leader Snoke actually activated it.”
Ren stared up at the throne as if it were strapped into an interrogation chair. After a moment, he said, “All of you stay where you are,” and jumped up onto the shadowy throne platform in one dramatic leap. Beside him, Hux definitely heard a happy sigh from Tiekte, and a muttered instruction to her droid to “Get every second of this!”
Prowling the throne platform, his tall, dark figure starlit and shadowed by turns, the Supreme Leader was a sight both eerie and compelling. Hux wished for a decent night-visor, so that he could see what exactly the wretched man was up to; instinct told him that pinning the Supreme Leader with a beam from the hand-lamp in his pocket would not be well-received. After a couple of traverses, Ren stilled in front of the throne, arms loose and relaxed at his sides. There was an abrupt, low-pitched hum, and the lights around the throne came on. Ren turned and looked down at them.
“Come up,” he said, and lifted a hand. Hux gritted his teeth over silence automatically as the familiar sensation of the Force in use surrounded him (it was rather like the first fitting of his armoured uniform tunic, as if molecules of air had suddenly all tightened around him into another layer of skin); Garmuth gasped, and Tiekte squeaked in startlement, as all three of them were suddenly swept off their feet and deposited on the throne platform next to Ren.
Ren turned back, sat down on the throne, and laid his left hand on the controls on its arm. Hux stared at the black ring for a moment before realising that it was…had been …Snoke’s. The droids swooped in, just in time for the glacis around the throne to open up like the mouth of a sarlacc, and swallow them, throne and all.